Jobs Summit Must Address Care Sector Bargaining Weaknesses

The Health Services Union (HSU) is calling for a major focus of the Federal Government’s Jobs and Skills Summit to be on modernising the bargaining system to keep up with the changing landscape of care work.

Wages are not keeping pace with cost of living, leading to a decline in living standards for many workers in the health and care sectors.   

HSU National Secretary, Lloyd Williams has accepted an invitation to attend the Jobs and Skills Summit and will be advocating for a fair care sector bargaining system.

The HSU represents more than 95,000 health, aged care and disability workers from across Australia.

Quotes attributable to HSU National Secretary Lloyd Williams

“The current bargaining system is broken and prevents workers in the health and care sectors from securing better wages and conditions and keeping their heads above water.”

“The Fair Work Act doesn’t adequately facilitate multi-employer collective bargaining, which is a particular disadvantage for the low-paid and highly feminised care workforces of aged care and disability support.”

“The care economy gets the majority of its funding from the federal and state governments, but they’re not involved in the bargaining and that’s another weakness of the system.”

“Our resource intensive aged care work-value case in the Fair Work Commission would not be necessary if we had a fair bargaining system that was delivering wages that reflected the value of the work.”  

“Work across health, aged care and disability support has changed, it is common sense for the workplace laws to be reviewed and updated.”

“We need to ensure that health, disability and aged care workers can keep up with the cost of living and that we are able to attract and retain workers to address the care sector crisis, we will be at the Summit advocating for the sensible changes required to achieve this.”

Media contact: media@hsu.net.au | 0417092849